love poetry

Love , art thou lonely to-day?
Lost love that I never see,
Love that, come noon or come night,
Comes never to me;
Love that I used to meet
In the hidden past, in the land
Of forbidden sweet.

Love! do you never miss
The old light in the days?
Does a hand
Come and touch thee at whiles
Like the wand of old smiles,
Like the breath of old bliss?
Or hast thou forgot,
And is all as if not?

What was it we swore?

1

Surely at last, O Lady, the sweet moon
That bringeth in the happy singing weather
Groweth to pearly queendom, and full soon
Shall Love and Song go hand in hand together;
For all the pain that all too long hath waited
In deep dumb darkness shall have speech at last,
And the bright babe Death gave the Love he mated
Shall leap to light and kiss the weeping past.

CANT. II.

S PONSUS .

I AM the lily of the vale,
The rose of Sharon's fragrant dale.
Lo, as th' unsullied lily shows
Which in a brake of brambles grows,
My love so darkens all that are
By erring men admir'd for fair.

S PONSA .

L O , as the tree which citrons bears
Amidst the barren shrubs appears,
So my Belov'd excells the race
Of man in ev'ry winning grace.
In His desired shade I rest,

Ay, she was as Madonna to
The tawny, lawless, faithful few
Who touched her hand and knew her soul:
She drew them, drew them as the pole
Points all things to itself.

She drew
Men upward as a moon of spring
High wheeling, vast and bosom-full,
Half clad in clouds and white as wool,
Draws all the strong seas following.

Yet still she moved as sad, as lone
As that same moon that leans above,
And seems to search high heaven through

TO A RCHILOCHUS

Pause , and scan well Archilochus, the bard of elder days,
By east and west
Alike's confest
The mighty lyrist's praise.
Delian Apollo loved him well, and well the sister choir:
His songs were fraught
With subtle thought,
And matchless was his lyre.

FOR A Tripod E RECTED BY D AMOTELES TO B ACCHUS

T HE precentor Damoteles, Bacchus, exalts
Your tripod, and, sweetest of deities, you
He was champion of men, if his boyhood had faults
And he ever loved honour and seemliness too.

IDYLL XXXI

L OVES

A H for this the most accursed, unendurable of ills!
Nigh two months a fevered fancy for a maid my bosom fills
Fair she is, as other damsels: but for what the simplest swain
Claims from the demurest maiden, I must sue and sue in vain
Yet doth now this thing of evil my longsuffering heart beguile,
Though the utmost she vouchsafes me is the shadow of a smile:
And I soon shall know no respite, have no solace e'en in sleep.

IDYLL XXIX

L OVES

" Sincerity comes with the wine-cup, " my dear.
Then now o'er our wine-cups let us be sincere.
My soul's treasured secret to you I'll impart;
It is this; that I never won fairly your heart
One half of my life, I am conscious, has flown;
The residue lives on your image alone.
You are kind, and I dream I'm in paradise then;
You are angry, and lo! all is darkness again
It is right to torment one who loves you? Obey

IDYLL XXIII

Love A VENGED

A LAD deep dipt in passion pined for one
Whose mood was froward as her face was fair
Lovers she loathed, for tenderness she had none:
Ne'er knew what Love was like, nor how he bare
A bow, and arrows to make young maids smart:
Proof to all speech, all access, seemed her heart.

So he found naught his furnace to allay;
No quiver of lips, no lighting of kind eyes,

IDYLL XIX

Love S TEALING H ONEY

O NCE thievish Love the honeyed hives would rob,
When a bee stung him: soon he felt a throb
Through all his finger tips, and, wild with pain,
Blew on his hands and stamped and jumped in vain.
To Aphrodite then he told his woe:
" How can a thing so tiny hurt one so?"
She smiled and said: " Why, thou'rt a tiny thing,
As is the bee; yet sorely thou canst sting"